Category Archives: Worship

Music will be central in all of our worship services between now and Easter. Here is some of the music that the choir will be singing:

Sunday, April 2

Our service on this Sunday will be enriched by special music by Mendelssohn. Most importantly, the choir, with our own Rory Latham, will present Felix Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer, a short cantata for soprano and chorus written in 1844 and premiered in London in 1845. There is a long tradition of the soprano solo being sung by an unchanged boy’s voice, and we are fortunate to have Rory Latham, an 8th-grade student at the Foote School, and son of Fiona Scott-Morton and Steve Latham, as our soloist.… Continue

On Palm Sunday, celebration will begin at 9:30 a.m. with activities for all ages in the Miller Gathering Hall, in addition to the adult Sunday School class, meeting in the choir room. At 10:45 a.m. the service will begin with the children and youth processing with palms to the opening hymn, All Glory, Laud and Honor. We will also collect the One Great Hour of Sharing special offering this Sunday.

The Maundy Thursday Worship service will be held in the Miller Gathering Hall at 7:30 p.m. on April 13th. We will be thinking together about Jesus’ last meal with his disciples.… Continue

Lent is a time for reflection, and the choir will be singing music to encourage that reflection over the next few Sundays. On March 5 the choir will sing “The Handiwork of God,” by Mark Miller. Mark teaches at
Drew University and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He’s the director of the Gospel Choir at ISM. He’s many a valuable addition to the gospel tradition, including a musical setting of “The Lord’s Prayer” that we’ve sung a
number of times at FPCNH. He wrote both the lyrics and the music for “The Handiwork of God;” the opening lines give a sense of what it says and does:

Stitched together piece by piece,
Sewn with purpose and with care,
Scraps once thought to have no worth
Now become a sacred treasure.

Our annual Advent/Christmas musical service will take place, as always, on the Third Sunday of Advent, which this year is December 11. The music will be more spread out through the service than it has been in the past few years.

We will begin with Eugene Smith reading the creation story in the words of James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones, followed by a haunting musical realization of the text “Spirit Moving Over Chaos.” The choral music will still center on the sermon time, though, in which we will alternate scriptural readings—readings that tell the Advent and Christmas story from Old Testament prophecy to the birth of Jesus–with musical commentary in choruses and carols.… Continue

The sanctuary will ring with music this October. Our auspicious beginning will be Christopher McCloskey’s ordination service on Saturday, October 1. The choir will sing Mendelssohn’s “How Lovely Are the Messengers that Preach Us the Gospel of Peace,” and we’ll sing joyous hymns appropriate to the occasion. Our organist/director (Pat McCreless has another obligation that day) will be Henry Parkes, a superb British musicologist and keyboardist who teaches music history, especially that of the medieval period, at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Department of Music. (He was the pianist for the London Symphony before coming to Yale two years ago!).… Continue